“I read thousands and thousands of book manuscripts for Mud Luscious Press, and none were ever like FUN CAMP. Durham’s debut is a novel but not a novel, a story collection but not a story collection, witty though not all about the clever, a kind of funny rippled with sadness: FUN CAMP is the perfect amalgamation. From now on, when someone asks me what it means to grow up, to run away into our future selves, I will hand them this book.”
—J. A. Tyler, former editor of Mud Luscious Press

“FUN CAMP is a beautiful flight of tragic-comic prose, so sharply realized it would actually be upsetting, if Gabe Durham weren’t so root-for-able in every way. Come for his astonishing & repeatably funny turns of phrase, stay for his furtive romanticism. Durham is lousy with wit and soul. I loved this book and did not want it to end.”
—Julie Klausner, author of I Don’t Care About Your Band and host of “How Was Your Week?”

“A less adept writer would flatten summer camp into mere nostalgic idyll or slapstick farce, but Gabe Durham is alive to the tonal complexity of his subject. I celebrate this book for its formal inventiveness, its rich humor, its exuberant language, its genuine spirituality, and most of all for its tender and abiding regard for the oversized feelings of adolescence. Durham knows his pranks, but he is not a prankster. He’s the real thing.”
—Chris Bachelder, author of Bear v. Shark and Abbott Awaits